THREATS AND RESPONSES: THE MIDEAST; Yemen, an Uneasy Ally, Proves Adept at Playing Off Old Rivals

When Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, met with President Bush a year ago, the Yemeni offered to help reconcile America's grievances with Saddam Hussein of Iraq, a longtime ally of Mr. Saleh's.

There is an Arab proverb, the Yemeni president said. If you put a cat into a cage, it can turn into a lion. Mr. Bush responded that he had no intention of reconciling, a senior administration official said.

''This cat has rabies,'' Mr. Bush said, referring to Mr. Hussein, and then added with a bluntness that was said by officials in the room to have shocked Mr. Saleh, ''The only way to cure the cat is to cut off its head.''

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the global campaign against terrorism forced the United States into an important but uneasy alliance with Yemen and its president, Mr. Saleh, a volatile army commander who seized power in Yemen in 1978 and who sided with Iraq during the Persian Gulf war of 1990-91.

But even as he positions himself now in the American camp, Mr. Saleh, ideologically, remains closer to Iraq, and some American and Saudi officials say the Yemeni leader is straddling the diplomatic fence, accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance from the Central Intelligence Agency while taking delivery, as he did this month, of North Korean Scud missiles.

The missiles ostensibly were purchased for Yemen's Army. But experts point out that Scuds are weapons of marginal military utility against any potential foe and could easily be resold. There is also no discernible enemy target they could reach from Yemen.

In any event, Mr. Saleh might not have been able to afford them, administration officials acknowledge, without some covert American assistance.

There is growing concern that Mr. Saleh's government -- or tribal leaders allied with him -- have continued to provide sanctuary to Qaeda cells, including the one that carried out the October 2000 attack on the destroyer Cole at Aden, killing 17 Americans.

At the time, Mr. Saleh declared Yemen's network of militant Islamic groups off-limits to United States investigators.

One regional expert in the administration said it was Yemen's history to play off rivals. During the cold war, Mr. Saleh ordered Soviet weapons while he tilted politically toward Washington and courted Western oil companies. At various times he used close relations with Iraq to fortify himself against Saudi Arabia, his largest historic rival.

''Anybody saying that Yemen is playing both sides in the war on terror doesn't know Yemen, and Yemen's need for stability and security,'' said Yemen's ambassador to Washington, Abdulwahab A. al-Hajjri. Noting the attack on the Cole, the ambassador called Yemen a ''victim of terrorism.''

One of the poorest nations in the Middle East, Yemen and its 19 million people are spread across an arid landscape where intertribal rivalry and conflict abound. Yemen is also the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, whose father was born in the mountainous Hadhramaut region, which straddles the caravan route that connected the Queen of Sheba's realm to King Solomon's court.

To its neighbors, today's Yemen has been strikingly friendly territory for Qaeda operatives. On Nov. 3, a Hellfire missile fired from an unmanned Predator drone killed two Qaeda men and four other passengers in a sport utility vehicle.

Until his arrest in the United Arab Emirates in early November, Al Qaeda's chief of operations for the Persian Gulf, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, moved in and out of Yemen with impunity even as Saudi Arabia's intelligence service was demanding his arrest for plotting in 1998 to attack the armored limousines of Saudi leaders with antitank missiles.

''The kingdom tried to get alNashiri from the Yemenis,'' said Prince Turki al-Faisal, former chief of Saudi intelligence and now Saudi ambassador to Britain. ''The kingdom enlisted the support of the U.S. in convincing Yemen to cooperate, but to no avail.''

As recently as February of this year, Mr. Nashiri was spotted by Saudi officials walking down a street in the Yemeni capital, Sana, in the company of the deputy director of Yemen's intelligence service, Col. Abdulaziz al-Safani.

''These people are under the protection of the government,'' one Saudi diplomat asserted. But Yemeni officials insist that is not the case. Ambassador Hajjri asserted that Mr. Nashiri did not set foot in Yemen during 2002 and therefore could not have been in the company of a Yemeni intelligence officer.

''Yemen is a tough client,'' said one administration official who follows the Middle East. ''We have to hold their feet to the fire to carry through on anything.''

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Mr. Saleh's allegiance is the subject of an ongoing debate within the Bush administration. The complexities of Yemen's tribal politics underscore the perilous aspects of alliance management in the antiterror campaign where trust is often the first casualty.

The Scud episode proved embarrassing for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who decided that the United States had to accede to Mr. Saleh's demand that the missiles be delivered to Yemen's army after they were intercepted at sea.

A senior administration official explained the White House motives more bluntly: the United States needs Yemen. As long as Mr. Saleh allows the C.I.A. to fly pilotless Predator drones over Yemeni territory and cooperates with American Special Forces and C.I.A. teams hunting for Qaeda members, the administration will not allow conflicts over weapons purchases to undermine an important relationship.

A C.I.A. spokesman declined to discuss covert funding to Yemen. A senior administration official acknowledged that money provided covertly could have freed other funds in cash-starved Yemen to purchase the missiles.

The Yemeni ambassador said: ''Whatever the U.S. is giving is given with a clear idea on what it will be spent on. You think the U.S. will give money without knowing where it will go or be used for?''

Yemen also needs the United States, the ambassador said. Yemen is home to as many as 60,000 militants who fought the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980's as allies of the United States, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

Still, there are an estimated 60 million Kalashnikov rifles in Yemen; some tribal chiefs are so heavily armed that they park Soviet-era tanks in their courtyards, the business end of the barrel facing out. The kidnapping of foreigners by Yemeni tribes to extort favors and concessions from the government is common.

So is terrorism directed at Mr. Saleh's government, most prominently over the past year by a group called Al Qaeda Sympathizers, who have carried out a half dozen bombings and demanded the release from detention of more than 170 of their comrades.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon put Yemen on a potential target list, and Mr. Saleh later told Muslim leaders that he was determined that Yemen not become the next Afghanistan. He flew to Washington to declare his support for Mr. Bush's antiterror effort.

During the White House meeting on Nov. 27, 2001, administration officials said, Mr. Bush told Mr. Saleh that Yemen's cooperation in the fight against terrorism would define relations between Yemen and the United States and between the two leaders personally.

Mr. Bush said a good first step would be the arrest of two of the most-wanted Qaeda operatives in Yemen, Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi and Muhammad Hamdi al-Ahdal, American and Yemeni officials said. In Yemen, they are known as Abu Ali and Abu Asem, reputed members of the Qaeda cell that attacked the Cole.

Mr. Bush offered to send Special Forces troops if Yemen's Army was not up to the job of confronting tribal leaders sympathetic to Al Qaeda, a senior administration official said, but Mr. Saleh pleaded for time and patience, saying Yemen's tribal politics -- which have fueled frequent fighting in the past, and did not fade away with the union of North and South Yemen in 1990 -- made it difficult.

A year ago, the Yemeni leader sent heavily armed troops into eastern Marib Province, a stronghold for Qaeda sympathizers. But instead of making the arrests that Washington was pressing for, the troops were outgunned. Eighteen soldiers died.

Mr. Saleh quietly told Washington that he was ready to accept assistance and a greater covert American presence in Yemen. C.I.A. financing and special forces training of Yemeni Army forces began early this year, administration officials said.

Last January, Mr. Bush sent an emissary to Saudi Arabia seeking Saudi agreement to conduct covert operations with Saudi and Yemeni forces, including Predator flights from Saudi bases along the Yemeni border. Crown Prince Abdullah gave his approval, Saudi officials said.

C.I.A. and Special Forces teams arrived in Saudi Arabia within weeks. ''They are not difficult to accommodate,'' one Saudi said. ''All they need is a warehouse.'' In the seven months that preceded the first Predator strike, Yemeni and Saudi operatives cooperated to track Qaeda targets, but key Qaeda leaders, like Mr. Ahdal, are still at large in Yemen.